The present invention relates to an article mounting rack and in particular to an article mounting rack having one or more panels each of which has a multiplicity of upwardly projecting resiliently deformable clamping pillars for enabling an article to be inserted between adjacent clamping pillars and held thereby.
Present-day electronic systems are generally constructed by mounting a plurality of electrical components or integrated circuits on a printed circuit board and then interconnecting those components by providing conductive strips on one or more surfaces of the printed circuit board. The printed circuit board may have a connector region which is inserted into a connector. The connector may be wired to other similar connectors having similar printed circuit boards with components mounted thereon to electrically interconnect a plurality of circuit boards.
The construction of the printed circuit boards generally proceeds in the following manner: The printed circuit board is first constructed using conventional etching and masking techniques to dispose conductive strips on the surface of an insulative base member. These "printed" boards are then given to assemblers who physically mount the individual components or or integrated circuits on the printed circuit board at predefined locations. Alternatively, the components are mechanically mounted on the printed circuit boards utilizing a suitable assembler machine. Soldering joints are then applied to physically and electrically interconnect the components to the appropriate interconnection points on the board.
The actual mounting and affixing of the individual components to each of these printed circuit boards can be accomplished in a single step or in several sequential steps. However, regardless of the particular assembly procedure, it is often necessary to temporarily store the printed circuit boards between manufacturing steps and after the printed circuit board has been completed but prior to shipment or insertion in the chassis of the electronic equipment.
Such interim storage of the individual printed circuit boards is presently done by providing a slotted piece of wood or by providing a piece of plastic with slotted rails. The individual printed circuits boards are stored by placing them on edge in the slots of either the slotted piece of wood or the slotted rails on the piece of plastic. However, such mounting racks are limited to having a planar configuration and have no capability for expansion or configuration changes. Consequently, a different rack must be made for each size of printed circuit board. Futhermore, such racks have no capability of grasping the printed circuit board making it necessary to maintain the rack in a horizontal orientation to avoid dislodging the printed circuit boards mounted on the rack from their respective slots.
Consequently, it is desired to provide a novel rack having one or more panels which can be removably interconnected in any of a number of different configurations to accommodate different sizes of printed circuit boards and which will be capable of grasping and holding onto each article, such as a printed circuit board, even if the rack is turned upside down. In addition, the rack panels in accordance with the invention are adapted to accommodate a number of different thicknesses of articles to be grasped without modification of the panels.
The present invention thus provides a novel rack apparatus comprising one or more panels where each panel has a plurality of clamping pillars, extending in a matrix configuration from the top surface of each of the panels for grasping and holding the printed circuit boards on the mounting rack in a predefined alignment with a predefined spacing therebetween. The clamping pillars are configured to be laterally resilient so as to accommodate any of a number of different printed circuit board thicknesses.
The above-described invention, while particularly applicable to the storage of printed circuit boards, is also applicable to the storage of any article which is planar and has a narrow width relative to the size of its major planar surface. Thus, a mounting rack in accordance with the invention may be configured to mount silk screen frames.